Boulders laugh, trees talk, and practically each patch of ground has meaning, in Atala Toy’s experience. Faeries, angels, ghosts, orbs, and spirits of place are just some of the life forms with which she helps us attune-and shows us how to record their image! Readers will cherish her rare combination of esoteric wisdom and practical guidance. With substantive clarity, she explains time travel, portals, dowsing, negative and positive vortexes, balls of energy known as merkabahs, ley lines, and orbs-the plasma of some life form visible to human eyes or to cameras, many of which are nature spirits who enjoy being around happy energy and so are often seen at parties and spiritual gatherings.

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE

The Haunted Hotel

The grand old Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, is known as the second most haunted hotel in America—surpassed only by a New Orleans hotel where such activity increased after Hurricane Katrina.

I unexpectedly discovered the Stanley Hotel’s very active energy when, on a nature photography shoot in Estes Park, I booked a night in the hotel simply because it had an online special. On check-in, looking at me strangely, the clerk asked if I preferred a room in the old part of the hotel. Because she seemed to be directing me to it, I said yes. Quaint would be nice, I thought.

Upstairs in the room, I sensed some energies, but that is usual for me when I travel, and I thought nothing of it. I opened the window. Despite its good strong fit, it slammed shut three times within fifteen minutes. This caught my attention, but I’d had a busy week at a show, and I bluntly requested that all energies please leave me alone. I needed to rest. I was starting to unpack when what sounded like a tour stopped outside my door. Curious, I opened the door to discover a guide explaining to a crowd of tourists that this was the most haunted floor of the hotel. She was leading a ghost tour!

Well, of course I had to take the tour and I changed my schedule accordingly. It turned out this was the hotel where Stephen King had stayed and that had inspired his book The Shining. The resident spirits included a staid old housekeeper who would settle down in bed to separate a couple if they were not married; the attentive, celebrity-loving, hospitable wife of the original owner; a lecherous former landowner who could still, even in ghost form, steal jewelry right off the hand of the wearer; a grumpy alcoholic caretaker; and a number of children, maid servants, and other ghosts. These had all been seen by numerous guests and employees.

The guide told us that a Colorado university professor had done a scientific study of the hotel and produced a paper about what he called the Stanley Effect. The guide said the professor believed the combination of minerals on which the hotel was built—limestone, quartz, and pyrite— plus the electrical power plant situated at a lake nearby, augmented the frequency at which paranormal events are brought into the human energy range. In essence, the combined elements were connecting the two frequency worlds, human and spirit, and amped up the ability of the ghost realm to affect the physical realm.

Often some of the ghosts would join the tour and that happened on mine. I smelled old-fashioned rosewater, which the guide explained was the ghost wife’s favorite scent. Then I saw the ghost standing by the tour director at the entrance to a haunted bedroom. She was acknowledging me in a friendly manner, possibly because I was someone “important” in that particular group, being an author. When the group went inside the bedroom, I happened to stand behind the bed. I watched with interest as the friendly ghost came in toward me and sat down on the bed, right in front of me, leaving a depression from her rump and a scent of rosewater in the air. The tour guide was also aware of this occurrence and pointed it out to the group.

The tour ended on my floor, and I went back to my room, ready to take a brief nap. However, the ghost and her rosewater scent came in with me. By now I had been consciously working with spirits for many years. I knew how to turn off the ability to see them and turn the ability back on.

The tour had provided me with the opportunity to experience the ghosts, and now I just wanted to sleep! So I grumpily thanked the ghost for her hospitality but asked if she would please leave and take her friends with her. There was a slight pause and then the ghost replied politely, “Well, all right, dear, I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable!” I replied I was, thanked her again, and she and all her friends left.